I have had a few emails regarding older beds that don’t tan like they used to. If you are not getting the power you used to, here is something that may help re-energize your old bed. I will assume you have fresh lamps, you have already reconditioned your acrylic with Novus, and the reflectors and lamps are clean, but still not getting the power it used to have.

Two words: Cooling system.

This is one of the most ignored part of a tanning bed, but it is so important that if a tanning bed manufacturer changes the cooling system in their tanning beds, they must recertify the beds. It affects the tanning that much. Here is a little background on why.

Tanning lamps are plasma devices, which means they generally create a fair amount of heat. The ambient temperature in the tanning chamber (the area below the acrylic and above the reflectors) needs to stay within a specific range to get maximum tanning power: 90 and 110 degrees F. Any lower or higher and you are not getting maximum UV.

I have done some tests on this personally, and found the output to drop drastically with temperature. As a matter of fact, a tanning bed doesn’t tan evenly during a tanning session either (assuming you are the first in the bed for the day). The bed starts out weak because the ambient temperature is too low. Then it increases until it peaks, which could be 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the design. A good cooling system will maintain the same temperature after 10 minutes, a bad or defective system will keep getting hotter, so the UV will start going down.

This means you need to VISUALLY check all your cooling fans with the bed on. Check all the vent holes for obstructions, including dust. Replace any defective fan (under $20 each anywhere) and clean out the vent holes. The bed has to not only breath, but breath properly.

Another thing to look out for: foam. Some beds use foam inside to force the air to go OVER the lamps in the tanning bed. It is usually a piece that goes from front to back near the middle or the end. Typically it is one piece, but the design could require two. If you remove this foam, you will change the cooling of the bed, and the UV output. Foam air guides are most common on older German tanning beds and American clones of them, such as SonnenBraune, Montego Bay, SCA, but even newer Alpha Sun beds use this in their Sunny models.

So check out the cooling system before assuming that old bed is just tired. An old bed will tan just as good as a new bed if you have good acrylics, good venting, good lamps and it is in good repair. The key is to keep up with the maintenance, before it becomes too expensive.

Dennis